Yesterday’s news cruise brought me a few related stories to report on today. The Washington Post let me know that there is a drug on the market that caused people who were injected to lose weight:

A study in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that taking daily shots of liraglutide (marketed as Saxenda) can help overweight or obese patients lose weight — a lot of it. Patients taking the medication lost an average of more than 12 pounds, twice as much as those on a placebo, after 56 weeks.

These people were also counseled to exercise 150 minutes more per week and to eat slightly less. The drug mimics a hormone that is released normally that causes a person to feel full. However, I know from all of the research I have done over the last year that losing weight is not as easy as not eating as much, and is negatively influenced by working more. It doesn’t matter how much you eat, it matters what you eat.

When insulin is secreted, or the level of insulin in the circulation is abnormally elevated, fat accumulates in the fat tissue. When insulin levels are low, fat escapes from the fat tissue, and the fat deposits shrink. All other hormones will work to release fatty acids from the fat tissue, but the ability of these hormones to accomplish this job is suppressed almost entirely by the effect of insulin and blood sugar. These hormones can mobilize fat from the adipose tissue only when insulin levels are low— during starvation, or when the diet being consumed is lacking in carbohydrates.

Therefore, a drug that causes weight loss by suppressing hunger can only cause weight loss if the patient quits eating carbs because they aren’t hungry. This drug is no solution, since it’s artificial starvation would immediately dissipate when the drug ceases to be delivered. Another ‘solution’ that is no cure. The cure is to quit eating carbs.

Another story that was handed to me by my lovely life partner yesterday was about the growing body of evidence that eating bacteria intentionally may have an effect on your mood, your serotonin levels in your brain, and your attitude toward life–all because of the effect that eating pre-digested foods has on your gut microbes.

This article over at mercola.com is entitled “Social Anxiety Disorder Linked to High Serotonin Levels, throwing Treatment with SSRIs into Serious Doubt”. I know that it doesn’t sound like this has anything to do with gut microbes, but if you read down a ways there is this:

Fermented Foods May Help Social Anxiety Disorder, Study Finds

Now, I don’t really care to get into whether “Social Anxiety Disorder” is really a thing or not. It may well be another way that ‘doctors’ can legitimize selling a pill. There are a lot of cases where once the pill is invented, the disorder must be created that will authorize insurance to pay for it. “Restless Leg Syndrome” comes immediately to mind. Social Anxiety Disorder is currently a reason to prescribe one of the many anti-anxiety selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) drugs, which are designed to reduce the ability of serotonin in the patient’s brain from being brought out of circulation, thus increasing brain serotonin levels. This ‘treatment’ assumes that the symptom is caused by low system serotonin levels. Turns out this is probably not the cause, and that SSRI are just treating a symptom.

The impact of your gut microbiome on your brain function has been confirmed by a number of studies, and research is moving rather swiftly in this area. One of the reasons for why the bacterial makeup of your gut would have an influence on your mental and emotional health relates to the fact that your gut actually works much like a second brain.

Your digestive system also creates serotonin. Or, should I say, something in your gut creates serotonin, and it ends up affecting your mood. There are so many things that point to eating more natural and less processed and chemical laced foods. The effect on your weight, mental health, and overall health is profound. I have found that my own mood and reactions to the world are influenced by what I eat during the week.

It’s important to realize that your diet and general lifestyle are foundational factors that must be optimized if you want to resolve mental health problems such as depression or anxiety, because your body and mind are so closely interrelated. Compelling research demonstrates just how interconnected your mental health is with your gastrointestinal health for example. While many think of their brain as the organ in charge of their mental health, your gut may actually play a far more significant role. The drug treatments available today for depression are no better than they were 50 years ago.

Eating fermented foods is good for you in a host of ways. Factory produced pickles or sauerkraut are not fermented foods . Those foods are dead. Fermented foods are alive when you eat them. Fermented foods are not going to last on a store shelf for years, because the most beneficial parts of them are actually living inside the food. Cooking these foods kills them and you lose that benefit. Eating raw fermented cucumbers is a different thing that eating raw vinegar pickles.

Making fermented foods at home is easy. It must be easy, because people have been storing food this way for longer than they have known how to write about it. The tools required to do it successfully are few, and the ways to mess it up to the point where the results are dangerous are just about nonexistent. I am selling some bottles that make this simple process even simpler. If you click this email link you can order a one quart swing-top glass jar, complete with fermentation airlock to make creating your own anti-depressants at home stupidly easy.

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About dcarmack

I am an instrument technician at the electric utility servicing the Kansas City Missouri metropolitan area. I am in the IBEW, Local 412. I was trained to be a nuclear power plant operator in the USN and served on submarines. I am a Democrat, even more so than those serving in Congress or the White House.